Music to my ears

Saturday's wonderful rain on this region so very parched was a fabulous sound for dozing in and out, and finally getting up and going. I was glad to run my weekend errands in the rain, as if I'm as much in a drought as the yards and fields.

I could not get enough of Janácek's Glagolitic Mass at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's performance Thursday evening. The piece is only thirty-nine minutes long. I wished the glorious music would have continued twenty more at least.

I was drawn to the concert by its Czech Night program which also included Dvorák's Seventh Symphony. I'm an itty-bit Bohemian, one quarter to be exact. My great-grandparents left Bohemia at the time when Dvorák, Smetana, and Janácek were all alive and composing.* Patriotism, national identity, and speech patterns of the language play important parts in these composers' music.

I learned to love "The Moldau," by Smetana, as a little girl watching Captain Kangaroo. About once a year his show featured the music accompanied by a film of the brooks growing into the river and flowing to the sea. I thank The Captain for this beautiful multisensory explanation of the water cycle. The film and music often come to mind as I work on my pet recycling project, and when I hear of my son's visits to Prague. The Moldau river is also called the Vltava, and flows through Prague.

How wonderful to hold that lesson combining music, beautiful photography, and science for forty-five years! What more can a teacher hope to impart?

But back to the Glagolitic Mass. I just love Janácek's music. It seems to mine into my core, and then sends white light down the shaft. That was my feeling when I first heard Jenufa, and still when I listen to it. I've been listening to some of his music for wind quintet lately, and have the same sensation. This performance was spine-tingling. The organ postlude was mind-blowing.



Glagolitic Mass is not something your surgeon removes and sends to the lab. Glagolitic refers to an alphabet created by St. Cyril and St. Methodius in the Ninth century A.D. to translate the Bible into the language of the Czech region of Moravia. It is related to the cursive Greek alphabet.

You can read the full text of Scott Cantrell's review for the Dallas Morning News. It's not written in Glagolitic. He writes eloquently about the music, and I wonder if he is just an itty-bit Czech, too:

I can't remember a musical experience more thrilling than the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's performance Thursday night of Leos Janácek's Glagolitic Mass.

What stunning music this is, a wondrous kaleidoscope of sound. To the traditional texts of the mass, but in Old Church Slavonic, brasses bray wild fanfares, strings churn, winds burble, the organ rumbles and roars. It's a score made for the generous acoustics of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center...

*Smetana, Bedrich (1824-1884), Dvorák, Antonín (1841 - 1904), Janácek, Leos (1854-1928).